SOUTH AFRICA -- A visit to ITWeb this morning revealed that the IT news site had been defaced by a group calling themselves Prime Suspectz. "Prime Suspectz owned itweb h0h0h0h0" read the message.

This is the same group responsible for the defacement of the South African sites for Nintendo, Asics and Samsung, according to Attrition.org. The same group has defaced Microsoft Mexico, Microsoft Saudi Arabia and Microsoft UK in the last few days.

From the commentary posted on previous defacements, it appears that the group originates from -or at least supports- Brazil (e.g. "BRAZI1 RLZ").

Brazil is the largest market for Internet services and e-commerce in Latin America, with an online population of 6.28 million according to eMarketer. It also has a growing reputation as a hotbed of hacking activity. Hackers from the country were implicated in the defacement of the Central Bank of Egypt and the disruption of the Vaticans Radio Site. It is also the country level domain with the largest percentage of worldwide hacks: 6,84%, according to Attrition, roughly 4% more than the second highest domain, China.

ITWeb has the distinction of being the first ".za" site to be defaced in May. The last za defacement recorded by Attrition.org was IntSys.